


someday, we will foresee obstacles

by casualmarches



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Dissociation, F/F, Post-Canon, Sacrifice Arcadia Bay Ending, Self-Hatred, chloe doesn't understand a lot of things, including her own worth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19005202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualmarches/pseuds/casualmarches
Summary: When she closes her eyes, all Chloe can see is the butterfly.





	someday, we will foresee obstacles

**Author's Note:**

> i was really spacey while writing this, so it probably doesn't make a lot of sense. i just like expanding on chloe's thoughts because i relate to them, so here's this thing

After the storm, they drive.

Chloe does not realize how tightly her hands are gripping the steering wheel until Max carefully reaches over and pries one of them off. She does not look at her as she intertwines their fingers, resting them on the center console like an unspoken promise.

It is funny to Chloe that she spent the last five years wishing to get out of Arcadia, and now that she is, she feels nothing but numb.

-

Another day, another motel room.

This is one of the nicer ones, at least. It has a bed that someone probably didn’t die in, and the colors on the TV don't flicker in and out.

 _"I'm going for a walk,"_ Max told her softly, just half an hour prior. _"T_ _o.. to clear my head."_

Neither of them mention how often they’ve done that.

The clock on the wall ticks with every passing second, the steady beat echoing in Chloe’s mind. It is like a stream of water slowly filling up her head, coursing through her veins. Rising and rising until it suffocates.

_I need to go to the bathroom._

It is small and cramped but it does not matter, as she fumbles for her pants button. Everything Chloe is doing feels unreal, like someone else is doing it, but it is also detailed, laid out like a story. The way she breathes, moves, exists.

When she closes her eyes, all Chloe can see is the butterfly.

The ripped picture, let go into a storm so much bigger than anything they could have imagined. The flapping of wings, so small in retrospect but followed by death, destruction, chaos. The blue, the brilliant blue imprinted on the back of her eyelids.

Chloe stands and stares at the mirror. Deadened eyes peek back at her, sunken in from lack of sleep. Her fingers trace her reflection lightly, skidding down the glass, leaving faint prints as if to say _I was here, I was here, I was here._ She can’t connect the girl she’s looking at to the girl she knows she is.

Does she know who she is?

..

Why her? Above all, why her?

Max had a future, had the whole world at her fingertips, and she threw it away, for - for her. She threw it all away just to go through hell, just to see the things that she still cannot talk about. The things that still give her nightmares, still make her eyes glaze over, still make her wake up screaming. All for Chloe, a stupid fucking junkie, a punk who couldn’t handle her dad’s death -

Chloe ruins things. She always has and always will, because she’s broken, broken and twisted and poisonous. She ruined Rachel, ruined her mom, ruined anyone who ever cared, anyone who ever wanted to love her, because who is she to deserve that? Who is she to deserve something so pure, so innocent, when she is everything but?

She took Max’s spirit, her resolve, her _love_ , and smashed it, left it in shattered pieces on the ground. Even if it wasn’t intentional, even if she never meant to, in the end, Chloe was the one who had a gun pressed against her stomach. Chloe was the one who bled out on a bathroom floor just like this one in another life, and that’s why they’re here now.

That’s why she cries now.


End file.
